Jose Sambayi Mukendi never sleeps at home anymore. To visit his 7-year-old son, Rissel, he arranges meetings through the office of a human rights organization. It is one of the few places he feels safe. Mukendi is a fugitive but not from any law. The businessman has been on the lam since he was tortured by President Mobutu Sese Seko's secret police for complaining to a court that other security agents tried to steal his nephews' car and then shot them when they resisted. ...

Millions of Congolese voted in the country's first multiparty election in four decades Sunday, the culmination of years of postwar transition that many pray will herald stability for the tumultuous central Africa region that Congo anchors. But with militia fighters still raping and looting in the lawless east, former rebel leaders on the ballot and a leading politician boycotting the vote, persuading all parties to accept the results may be the toughest task of all. Voters,...

A flurry of diplomatic efforts to broker a cease-fire in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is showing little sign of bearing fruit, with Laurent Kabila's forces and foes trading rival battlefield claims. A meeting in Ethiopia of defense ministers and military officials from countries linked to the conflict became bogged down Friday by wrangling over alleged Rwandan involvement and whether Kabila's rebel foes should attend, delegates said. Diplomats say that the chances for...

Voters eager for peace but fearing new violence trekked to nearly 50,000 polling stations across this sprawling country Sunday to cast ballots for Congo's first democratically elected government since the dawn of independence 46 years ago. All but the oldest voters perused a list of presidential and parliamentary candidates and marked their choices for the first time ever. By the end of the day, millions of Congolese had purple thumbs from the indelible ink that indicated they had voted.

Laurent Kabila's troops fired into the air to break up a protest against the new government of Congo (formerly Zaire) Friday as tension rose between his former rebels and the political opposition. As hundreds of his followers chanted anti-Kabila slogans in the streets of Kinshasa, the capital, veteran opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi said he did not recognize the government formed Thursday, which excluded him. "This government doesn't exist for me. I ask all the people to resist with their last...

The United Nations Security Council has unanimously approved a resolution opening a new phase in the UN peacekeeping mission in Congo and demanding an end to all hostilities. The council late Friday backed UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's recommendation to start implementing the next phase in the peace process: the withdrawal of all foreign forces in Congo and the disarmament, demobilization and departure of armed groups. "The peace process in Congo may be at a turning...

After twice postponing the inauguration of President-designate Joseph Kabila, Congo's leadership said Thursday he would take the oath of office Friday and address the Central African nation for the first time. The young Kabila was swept to power last week after his father, Laurent Kabila, was killed by his own bodyguard. The fallen president's inner circle was quick to fill the power vacuum but has since fretted over legal details of succession in a war-divided country that...

Rwanda's president opened talks with the Belgian government Friday as part of renewed efforts to end fighting in Congo, where Rwandan troops are backing anti-government rebels. President Paul Kagame's visit comes less than a week after Congolese President Joseph Kabila made a similar visit to Belgium, the former colonial ruler of both Congo and Rwanda that is seeking to advance peace talks. In a visit to UN headquarters in New York this week, Kagame said Rwanda...

A United Nations team sent to investigate allegations that Hutu refugees from Rwanda were murdered in eastern Congo by troops loyal to Laurent Kabila has again been stymied by the Kabila government, an American on the team said Thursday. Reed Brody, an American human rights expert and one of three investigators appointed this month by Secretary General Kofi Annan, said Congo had written to Annan raising new conditions that "put obstacles in the way of the mission." Fred Eckhard,...

Joseph Kabila, the 29-year-old political heir whom most Congolese had neither seen nor heard of until this week, was sworn in on Friday as Congo's new president, inheriting a country occupied by a half-dozen foreign armies. Ten days after the assassination of his father, Laurent Kabila, the younger Kabila became the fourth president since this Central African nation's independence in 1960. Soldiers from Angola and Zimbabwe, the government's main allies, kept the...

Rwanda's president opened talks with the Belgian government Friday as part of renewed efforts to end fighting in Congo, where Rwandan troops are backing anti-government rebels. President Paul Kagame's visit comes less than a week after Congolese President Joseph Kabila made a similar visit to Belgium, the former colonial ruler of both Congo and Rwanda that is seeking to advance peace talks. In a visit to UN headquarters in New York this week, Kagame said Rwanda...

Bending ever so slightly the admirable rule against speaking ill of the dead, let's stipulate: Laurent Kabila was a liar, cheat, thief and political non-entity. As president of Congo, he did not lift a finger to raise his country out of its pitiable ruins. Kabila spent his three-year reign cutting deals with Western entrepreneurs eager for Congo's diamonds, oil, arms contracts, whatever. A deal gone wrong--payoffs not shared?--is one probable explanation for Kabila...

Laurent Kabila was sworn in Thursday as president of Congo, completing his takeover of the former Zaire and assuming sweeping powers to lead the country that is emerging after decades under ousted dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. The 56-year-old former rebel leader promised presidential and legislative elections by April 1999 after rebuilding a country left in ruins by Mobutu, who became one of the world's richest men by plundering the economy. "We should start from the beginning," Kabila told the crowd at...

After twice postponing the inauguration of President-designate Joseph Kabila, Congo's leadership said Thursday he would take the oath of office Friday and address the Central African nation for the first time. The young Kabila was swept to power last week after his father, Laurent Kabila, was killed by his own bodyguard. The fallen president's inner circle was quick to fill the power vacuum but has since fretted over legal details of succession in a war-divided country that...

Supporters of a popular Congolese politician echoed the United States Thursday in calling for a broadly based government, and urged Laurent Kabila to include the longtime activist. Etienne Tshisekedi, who for decades opposed the deposed dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, met with a senior Kabila aide in talks apparently aimed at bringing Tshisekedi into the new government. Hundreds waited today outside his house, near a huge portrait of Tshisekedi propped against a hedge. "If (Kabila) makes any mistakes, the...

Leonard Woodcock, 89, who succeeded Walter Reuther as president of the United Auto Workers and served through much of the 1970s; he was an envoy to China under President Jimmy Carter, negotiating the re-establishment of full Sino-American diplomatic relations in 1979; in 1970, he led the union in a bitter 67-day strike against GM that won the UAW substantial wage and pension gains; since 1980, he was an adjunct professor at the University of Michigan;...

The Tribune is once again to be commended for its consistency. Your editorial on Congo ("Get it right this time in Congo," May 21) was predictably hypocritical and misleading. After more than 30 years of Washington-supported graft, political suppression and mass slayings conducted under the auspices of our man in Zaire, Mobutu Sese Seko, the press has suddenly discovered its conscience and is calling for democracy in central Africa. Why such a belated response? Because, as your editorial informs us with...

For three unpredictable days, Africa has been holding its breath to see whether war-battered Congo will plunge deeper into bloody chaos or choose the path to peace after the killing of strongman Laurent Kabila. But on Friday, a worshipful headline in a state-controlled newspaper--"Even Dead, Kabila Remains Alive"--hinted at a third, more unexpected alternative for this volatile wreck of a country: a grim status quo that preserves Kabila's ruinous policies in central Africa virtually to the...

The presidents of Congo and Rwanda, enemies in a 22-month civil war that has drawn five foreign armies into Africa's third-largest nation, met Saturday in Kenya and agreed to promote peace and restore bilateral relations. Laurent Kabila of Congo and Paul Kagame of Rwanda met in Eldoret, 150 miles northwest of Nairobi, Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi's office said in a statement. A Rwandan security source who accompanied Kagame to Eldoret said it was the first time the two...

When Laurent Kabila fought a rebellion to overthrow the late dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997, Kabila enjoyed enormous legitimacy. The people of the nation then called Zaire felt nothing could be worse than the tyrant he had ousted. They were wrong. Kabila, with his corrupt and narcissistic pursuit of personal power, did even more damage as president to the sprawling Central African nation now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo. He managed to make himself even more reviled than...